Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in how many zones badger culling has taken place for longer than six weeks, and what the completion date was of the cull in each zone in each of the last five years.
The duration of the cull period is intended to achieve a balance between sufficient intensity to achieve disease control and what is operationally deliverable by a cull company. The length of each cull operation between 2013 and 2016 has already been published as part of the annual badger control monitoring summaries (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/bovine-tb-controlling-the-risk-of-bovine-tb-from-badgers). The assessment of 2017 operations will be published on gov.uk in due course.